Column: Allen Finegold: How we can bring troops home and avoid civil war

Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militants are struggling for control of Baghdad - whose population is roughly 50 percent Shi'ite and 50 percent Sunni.

Until the recent surge of U.S. troops, fanatics on both sides of this religious division had brought Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war. The situation is still close to it.

Militant Shi'ites have diminished their activities in Baghdad, but the Sunni insurgency continues there and in Fallujah, Ramadi and other cities in central Iraq. South of the "Sunni triangle," there is far less violence. However, if U.S. troops were to leave, militant Shi'ites, in such groups as the Badr brigades, might strike out against those locals who do not knuckle under to them.

A swift withdrawal of American forces from the entire country would leave Sunni and Shi'ite fanatics unrestrained. The official Iraqi forces (those of the nominal government) are not yet reliable. They may never be.

Lack of training and poor morale are not the only problems of the Iraqi police and army. The Shi'ite death squads in Baghdad are composed largely of members of Muqtada Al Sadr's militia, which has infiltrated both the Iraqi army and police. The number of American soldiers in Baghdad has been increased and will continue to increase during most of this year.

This much-publicized troop surge has brought about a significant decrease in the sectarian violence in Baghdad. But suicide bombers still strike with horrifying effect on the populace.

There is another critical problem. How long can U.S. troops keep up their patrols? Many soldiers are on their second tour of duty in Iraq. Some are on their third. Tours of duty now last 15 months. That a troop surge was considered necessary to keep the situation in Baghdad from disintegrating into chaos indicates that little or no progress had been made in stabilizing Iraq since the invasion of March 2003. This administration's reassurances to the contrary are delusional.

During the past two years, Iraqi politicians quarreled while the extremist militias wreaked havoc. Though the addition of more American troops has temporarily suppressed or diminished much of the violence in central Iraq, the underlying hatreds that cause it remain.

The U.S. Army could be in Iraq for another 10 to 12 years before some of those hatreds begin to subside. U.S. forces in Iraq already are stretched to the limits of their capabilities.

There is only one way to diminish the risk of a full-blown civil war in Iraq while allowing a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops: Iraq would have to be partitioned into three regions - Kurdish (in the north), Sunni (in the middle) and Shi'ite (in the south). But this would require a massive movement of people.

The suggestion to partition Iraq was first advanced by historians. Sen. Joseph Biden made such a proposal, publicly, more than two years ago. In the March 1 edition of the Globe-News, a column by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison advocated partitioning of Iraq. She acknowledged Biden's proposal but criticized it because Biden allowed only until the end of this year for withdrawal of all U.S. troops.

Of course, if Hutchison had written to her constituents when Biden first proposed a partition of Iraq, there would have been time enough to work out all the necessary arrangements for such a transition. There also would have been time to plan a gradual withdrawal of all U.S armed forces from Iraq by the end of this year.

But neither Hutchison nor any of her conservative colleagues gave the slightest indication that they would favor a partition of Iraq - before the 2006 election - or that they would support a timetable for partition. President Bush did not do so. He still does not.

Perhaps Hutchison and Sen. John Cornyn could walk over to the White House one day and suggest to the chief occupant thereof, a man not unknown to them, that the partitioning of Iraq is now the least grim of all our alternatives in the present situation.

To cause a massive transfer of the Shi'ite population of Baghdad to the southern regions of that country, without the use or threat of force, would require providing costly incentives for these people to move.

Transportation and housing would have to be provided, along with an infrastructure sufficient to provide electricity and clean water for all the new inhabitants.

Hundreds of large construction projects would have to be completed throughout the southern part of Iraq to accommodate those who would move to it.

As Mr. Powell said, "(If) you break it, you own it."

Allen Finegold is a longtime Amarillo resident and a Democratic Party activist.